Submitted by Old-Capital-7781 t3_10eu3jw in books
iambluest t1_j4t6nep wrote
These books were written at a time when people were not exposed to imagery in media to the extent you are used to. My example is the description of a street festival in count of Monte Cristo. It goes on for pages. Nowadays, a few lines to set the scene would be enough, because we have all seen various street parties in person while traveling, or in movies and tv. Back then, those experiences were far less common. I think this his, then, one factor...the author needed to be able to describe what was unfamiliar to the reader, and do it well without spoiling the pace of the story.
ohcharmingostrichwhy t1_j4t7n12 wrote
Fascinating point! I haven’t thought of it like that before!
IAmAlive_YouAreDead t1_j4vq5jx wrote
That's an interesting point, never had I considered that before.
JustAnnesOpinion t1_j4x0cgf wrote
Totally agree that nineteen century readers had much smaller internal libraries of remembered visual images to draw on than we typically do. I suspect that at least some of those readers had developed their abilities to take in authors’ lengthy descriptions and build robust mental pictures from them. It’s easier and maybe a better strategy for us to pull up an image from memory or with Google for “Colorado mining town” or whatever than mentally build one following an author’s description, but really digging into the description and making something out of it can be its own experience.
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